Special Collections

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Folder 1:

TM. “The Lost Garden.” 1 page. Handwritten annotations.

Folder 2:

AM. Contains the following poems: “By the Borders of Canaan”; “Wanderers Still”; “Sackcloth and Ashes”; “The Gulf”; “Tennessee”; “Through All the Aprils Yet to Come”; “When the Cool Winds Play”; “June in Tougaloo”; “Song for a Love that Is Dead”; “Paean”; “The Last Quarter Moon of the Dying Year”; “Depression”; “Second Marriage”; “Lorraine”; “Remembered Words for an Old Psalm”; “Unstolen Fire”; “Out of the Dingy Alleyways”; “Winter Rode Away”; “The Co____”; “We Do Not Choose to Whine”; “The Resurrection”; “A December Prophecy”; “This Is the End.” 13 pages with annotations in another hand initialed “H.D.”

Folder 3:

AM. “As Told Years Afterwards” and “Jeremiah in the Deep South.” 1 page.

Folder 4:

TM. “Dark Hands to the Lord” containing the following poems, with an occasional poem handwritten and with other annotations, some initialed “H.D.”: “Out of the Dingy Alleyways”; “Winter Road Away”; “The Awakening/Signals”; “Poet in a Sanitarium”; “A New Testament”; “Faith of a Mustard Seed”; “If Earth Can Take a Buried Bone”; “Miracle”; “Tougaloo”; “June in Tougaloo”; “And One Shall Live in Two”; “Paean”; “The Great Man”; “Unstolen Fire”; “Hold Up Your Head”; “Words for Young Adam”; “Words to Young Eve”; “Adam in Tougaloo”; “Song for Love that Is Dead”; “Epitaph for Young”; “The Lord Delays His Coming”; “The Long Delay”; “I Remember Chaffee, Missouri”; “Remembrance of a Bud”; “Lorraine”; “There Is Music when the Cool Winds Play”; “Second Marriage”; “A Lad in Tougaloo”; “A Poet I Knew”; “Depression”; “Garnered the Yields”; “When the Day Is Over”; “The Last Quarter Moon of the Dying Year”; “Tomorrow”; “A Brown Aesthete Speaks”; “Cairo at the Mason-Dixon Line”; “I Pity You People”; “Invocation for a Distressed People”; “The Gulf”; “The Caucasian”; “When I Came to Understand Civilization”; “The Colored Lady Henry Lee”; “Beggar’s Will”; “By the Borders of Canaan”; “Comfort Ye My People”; “Apocalypse in Black”; “Song.” 67 numbered pages.

Folder 5:

TM. “The Angel and the Nigger/A Sheaf of Dusk” containing the following poems in a blue folder with occasional handwritten poems and annotations: “Homer in the Marketplace”; “Depression/Uncle Sam”; “Tougaloo”; “The Gulf”; “Thoughts while Washing Mrs. Aesthete’s White Dishes”; “Now that Beauty Is a Religion in My Soul”; “The Negro Sings of Canaan/The Trail of Trial”; “The Resurrection”; “New Testament/A Vial of Iodine”; “Faith of the Mustard Seed”; “Winter Road Away”; “A Mountain Resurrection”; “The Wind in Tougaloo”; “And One Shall Live in Two”; “Paean/Lorraine in Tougaloo”; “God’s Masterpiece/The Potter’s Vessel”; “Young Eve and Adam, let beauty blind your eye…”; “Tougaloo”; “Adam in Tougaloo”; “Eve in Tougaloo/Words for Young Eve”; “A Student I Know”; “Spring in Touglaoo”; “Father to Son”; “A Poet I Knew”; “Elegies for Love”; “Remembrance of a Bud”; “Second Marriage”; “The Last Quarter Moon of the Dying Year”; “Dirge”; “Dirge to a Brown Girl Dassie Hayes/Blessedness”; “Garnered the Yields.” 44 numbered pages.

Folder 6:

TL. January 1, 1935. Jonathan [Henderson Brooks] in Corinth, MS to L.W. Voorhees at Talladega College in Talladega, AL. Re: enclosure of poems for forthcoming anthology; absence of one which has one him prize money under a “non de plume”; receipt of an encouraging letter from Nelson Baker; missing the library at Tougaloo College.

TLS. March 22, 1935. J.H. Brooks in Corinth, MS to [Lillian W.] Voorhees at Talladega College in Talladega, AL. 2 pages. Re: elation at number of inclusions in The Brown Thrush; discussion of suggested changes; discouragement at publishing a volume of his own.

TLS. August 1, 1956. Lillian W. Voorhees at Fisk University in Nashville, TN to Henry Dalton. Envelope. Re: letters and poems by Jonathan Henderson Brooks.

See also:

The Crisis (September 1934) with “Song” on page 273. [Call number: E185.5 C92].

Ebony and Topaz: A Collectanea edited by Charles S. Johnson (New York: National Urban League, c.1927) with “And One Shall Live in Two” on page 72 and “A Student I Know” on page 157. [Call number: PS508 N3 J6].

Kaleidograph: A National Magazine of Poetry 5 (April 1934) with “A New Testament” on page 6. [Call number: PS301 K3].

Kaleidograph: A National Magazine of Poetry 14 (August 1942) with “Dusk Song” on page 16.

Kaleidograph: A National Magazine of Poetry 16 (September 1944) with “My Angel” on page 3.

Kaleidograph: A National Magazine of Poetry 17 (July 1945) with “Somewhere Lost in Heaven” on page 8.

The Lyric 8 (Spring 1933) with “Faith of the Mustard Seed” on page 7. [Call Number: PS301 L9].

Opportunity: Journal of Negro Life 15 (November 1937) with “Season that Grieves” on page 331. [Call number: E185.5 O6].

The Poetry of the Negro, 1746-1949 edited by Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1949) with “The Resurrection,” “My Angel,” “And One Shall Live in Two,” “Muse in Late November,” and “She Said…” on pages 176-188. [Call number: PN6109.7 H8].

The Resurrection and Other Poems by Jonathan Henderson Brooks (Dallas: Kaleidograph Press, 1948). [Call number: PS3503 R725 R4].

Singers in the Dawn: A Brief Anthology of American Negro Poetry compiled by Robert B. Eleazer (Conference on Education and Race Relations, 1934) with “The Resurrection” on pages 16 & 17. [Call number: PS310 N4 E6].